Are You More Entertaining than a Sock Puppet
April 9th, 2008 by Michael Gray in videoIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
So my buddy Loren Feldman over at 1938 media has been having grand old time giving a parody of Shel Israel lately. While it’s all been pretty funny I think there are a few points to learn from this.
Let’s take a look at one of Loren’s videos:
Now lets look at one of Shel’s videos …
Chances are you made it all the way through Loren’s Sock Puppet but you bailed on Shel’s video … why … did you have 10 minutes of your life to sacrifice to a video that was going nowhere fast? The shorter your web video is the more successful it’s going to be, under 5 minutes OK, under 2 minutes great, under 90 seconds better, under 60 seconds BINGO! Like it or not we live in a sound bite culture, want to reach them … pander to their short attentions spans, want to talk to people still reading dead tress prattle on for 10 minutes or more. Go ahead look at all the most popular tech video podcasts on ITunes with the exception of TWIT you’ll find they are all usually less than 5 minutes.
Where it really gets bad is Shel the puppet has better guests than the real Shel, for example founder of LeWeb and Seesmic Loic Lemur
Gabe Rivera of TechMeme
What really makes it worse is TechCrunch is now reporting the parody show with the puppet has corporate sponsor while the original is flying without a net …
The new sponsor, Zong, a Switzerland-based mobile platform company, is providing “significant funding” to sponsor the parody Shel Israel show created by Feldman.
What’s the takeaway here … don’t play in the big leagues if you don’t have what it takes to compete. Don’s use the medium to talk to an audience when you don’t understand what makes them tick and how to reach them.
So how would I tell Shel to fix his problem … #1 cut your videos down 2 minutes of good stuff is better than 2 minutes of good stuff and 8 minutes of blah. #2 Be more compelling, don’t play it safe, take some risks and ask tough questions, watching you slowball meatballs across the plate is boring. #3 Embrace the puppet, do a show or two with him, show you are a good sport and can take a joke.
Sphere It
April 9th, 2008 at 12:35 am
I used to believe that GW, but… I have spoken to Gary Vaynerchuk about this and he has proven that length does not matter. 80k people watch his 25-minute videos every single day.
I’m doing daily vids that go between 3-10 minutes now and my viewer ship is growing faster than ever before. You just gotta have something to say that is better/different/more informative than everyone else, and you should at least try to be a bit entertaining.
Nobody wants to see the same old stuff they’ve seen like Shel was trying to do, that’s why it failed. Plus the poor production…
As for Loren, he’s a story-teller, and a comedian and an entertainer, so his stuff is very watchable because, well, it’s fun.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:37 am
And as we are now dealing with people who have the attention span of a twitter, it becomes even more important to squeeze the message into a teeny tiny blob.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Oops Loic seems to have a slight spam problem on that post you linked to
April 9th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Jim Kukral »
you can get away with longer once you are established but if you are building an audience IMHO you need to be sensitive to quality, on all levels. Agree nobody wants to see same stuff we’ve seen before.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Jim,
The fact that you had to jump to an exception to the rule to back your argument, kills it before you’ve even hit “submit comment”.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Actually, Gary’s videos have been long since day one. He was told to make them shorter by “experts”, but he instead made them longer and his viewers grew even more.
Look, I’m making videos, daily. I can absolutely tell you that my readers like me videos longer than the shorter ones. My point is, I don’t think that somebody getting into video should limit themselves to short videos if they have a good story to tell.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Jim Kukral »
if you can be interesting and entertaining for 10 minutes then do it, but if you are only interesting for 2 or 3 then you need to edit it down.
In this case social media audiences are card carrying members of short attention span theatre, why Shel wouldn’t recognize this and cater to it is a bit mindboggling. You don’t serve kobe beef at a PETA rally and wonder why no one is eating and giving you dirty looks.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I’ve always felt that long videos, with good stories to tell are all fine and good — for professional video experts. If you’re online, holding one frame, not making anything interesting to watch, then for the love of all that is good an holy keep your videos short. Seriously, commercials on television have an obscene number of cuts and changes (like 30ish for a 20 second spot) to keep the viewers interested. I’m all for people having long videos, but make them nice; don’t plunk up something that is chock full of “useful” information and then make it sinfully boring to watch.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
That’s excellent! Sock puppets are clearly better interviewers.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
The puppets are very funny, agree there, but this “don’t play in the big leagues if you don’t have what it takes to compete” … nah, disagree. The minute you start thinking like that (ie. from fear) is the day you truly fail. Give the man a chance!
April 9th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
On the content: I think your advice is great.
On the way it was delivered: Did Loren have to tear down Shel in public to teach this lesson? It seems cruel, and even bullying, to me.
I’m the LAST person to point fingers when it comes to being sarcastic and/or very direct in my criticism. But this seems to go over the line.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Quick follow on: No axe to grind here. I love Loren’s work. Just wondering if professionalism gave way to playground nastiness here.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:15 am
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April 13th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
If you have something really interesting to say, take all the time necessary to say it - no more, no less, whether it’s 30 seconds or… 30 minutes! If it’s really interesting, people will listen, or read, or watch.